Grinding is attrition and approximately 20% of the population suffers from some form of grinding. You can be grind your teeth at night; which is called Sleep Abruxism or grind your teeth during the day.

Erosion is tooth wear caused by acid. The acid can be ingested such as an acid beverage like colas or red bull. The erosion can also be intrinsic or from the inside your body called gastric reflux.

Grinding your teeth and erosion causes wear to your dental enamel. Dental enamel is the hardest surface of your body and once you wear through your dental enamel you expose the dentin. The dentin is much softer than dental enamel and wears quickly which becomes a problem. The biggest problem you will have is that your bite will change as a result of your tooth wear. Your bite gets lopsided, which also can cause you pain. As the dentin gets exposed your teeth get yellower. Your teeth can also move and become loose. All of these factors can ruin your smile.

How Can I Help You With This Problem?

The first solution is to catch the problem before it becomes significant. You can start to wear an appliance. The appliance is generally something you wear during your sleep time and doesn’t help you during the day. The people who grind during the day need to become aware of it and try to stop themselves.

The second solution is dental rehabilitation. Dental rehabilitation is used when your wear has progressed to the point where you have dentin exposed. We can do partial rehabilitation or full rehabilitation for our patients, depending on what meets your needs. Your teeth can be protected by covering up the exposed dentin with porcelain and your bite can be restored by engineering you back to a stable chewing position.

If you are suffering from tooth wear or erosion, contact us and we will be happy to help. You Can Get A Great Smile!

If you are interested in having dental implants completed I invite you to look over my website and request a dental implant consultation. The benefits of dental implants are a better smile, a better ability to chew and a better quality of life.

I have developed a dental technique to place dental implants completely from start to finish in my office using a special technique with flapless computer guided dental implant surgery.  I plan out the implant position based on your restorative needs, your available bone and your biology by using a special 3D radiograph. I am able to find the ideal position for your dental implant. If you have adequate bone levels we can place the implant with a tissue punch instead of flapping your gums back and using sutures. The nice thing about this technique is that the post operative discomfort and pain is really minimized and the healing period is accelerated.

This is a great technique if you are thinking about having dental implants. Click on the video below to find out more and If you have any questions call our office, send us an email or comment below.

Are you concerned that your teeth are wearing down, and becoming sensitive, well you may be suffering from tooth wear from attrition or erosion.

Attrition is defined as tooth wear that develops from tooth to tooth contact, usually caused by grinding your teeth. Studies indicate that about 20% of people grind their teeth during the daytime and about 10% grind their teeth at night.

Erosion is tooth wear caused by acids. The source of the acid can be extrinsic like carbonated beverages, citrus fruits or energy drinks. The acid can also originate from the stomach with Gastric Reflux and Bulimia being the usual reasons for stomach acid to arrive in the mouth.

The main issue if you feel you suffer from any form of tooth wear is protection and prevention. If your tooth wear has been diagnosed at an early stage you can concentrate on preventing further tooth wear with diet modification, protective dental appliances and some limited dental bonding to restore the small areas of attrition or erosion.

If your tooth wear has progressed to the point that your protective enamel has been worn away and you have exposed your inner dentin you will likely need a more comprehensive solution. As you may know the protective dental enamel is the hardest substance in the body but the dentin is very soft and will wear at a much more accelerated rate once it has been exposed.

Another problem with tooth wear is that the bite will often change as your teeth wear. This can lead to an unstable bite, muscle and TMJ pain. You may even feel that you don’t have a solid position to bite your teeth into or like you have more than one bite.

Your teeth can also move and spaces can open up between your teeth or you can experience crowding.

If you suffer from any of these conditions we have a solution for you! There are many options that modern dentistry can provide to help you with your dental problems and I feel that the key to a successful outcome is to create a treatment plan that is completely customized to your unique situation.

If you look over the pictures that accompany this post you can see an example of a patient with severe attrition, erosion and bite collapse that was treated with a full mouth rehabilitation using porcelain crowns. The first step for your rehabilitation is to come into the office and have a comprehensive evaluation.

When the patient’s treatment of choice is a conservative esthetic rehabilitation with porcelain veneers it is paramount to be respectful of the existing tooth structure, especially the dental enamel. The use of porcelain as an enamel substitute is an excellent application of the biomimetic principle due to the similar elastic modulus, thermal expansion, and optical properties of the two structures. When the original tooth has a thinned out or worn enamel surface and is restored to original volume with porcelain as an enamel substitute, studies by Dr. Pascal Magne and others have found that the tooth recovers much of its original structural, optical, and biomechanical properties.

Numerous retrospective studies that look at porcelain veneer longevity have also found that the veneer will have more predictable long-term success if the restoration is bonded primarily to enamel.

The traditional approach for porcelain veneer preparation was to use a depth cutting diamond on the existing tooth surface and remove a fixed amount of tooth structure. This technique leads to an excessive loss of sound dental enamel with unnecessary dentin exposure especially in patients that already have wear or thinning of the enamel surface that will be restored with the new veneers.
This preparation method has been replaced by newer techniques that attempt to relate the tooth preparation to the desired final outcome as represented by the additive diagnostic wax-up.

With this in mind the Key Concept for Porcelain Veneer Preparations is that the tooth reduction should be relative to the final outside surface of the porcelain veneer, not the outside surface of the tooth that you are preparing.

I have added some images for a case that follows the Biomimetic Principle by replacing the thinned out and loss of enamel due to erosion with porcelain veneers.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them using the link above.

I thought I would share some photos from the one-week post-operative appointment with the implant surgery case I posted last week in this blog. As you can see the case has healed really well at the one-week mark and the tissue looks excellent. The patient reported virtually no pain, swelling or bleeding post surgery and should be ready for the final impression next month.

Feel free to add any comments or questions using the link above.

I wanted to post a couple of photos from an implant I recently placed at my dental office in Oakville, Ontario. The implant was a Straumann bone level implant. The surgery was completed with a Simplant Surgiguide and the implant was placed without a flap through a 4.0 mm tissue punch.

I have talked about this technique on my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/user/ phelandentalseminars and I wanted to share some photos from this case to illustrate how great the surgical site looks post surgery using this approach. You will notice the only incision is the tissue punch and no sutures were required.

I called the patient the next day and he told me it did not even feel like he had any surgery completed on the area! I really feel this technique is excellent for the patient providing you have an adequate bone and tissue volume. Are you wondering how this ridge is so well preserved for the implant surgery? I will talk about the technique I use for ridge preservation at the time of the tooth extraction in a future post.

Feel free to add any comments or questions using the link above.

Quality and quantity of available bone for implant placement is more often a factor in qualifying for dental implants than medical conditions. However, even people who have lost significant amount of bone can qualify for dental implant treatment with additional procedures to add bone or create new bone. Advances in this type of treatment have made it possible for thousands of patients who would not previously have been considered candidates to have successful implant procedures.

Besides, given the overall health care benefits, you should not deny yourself proper treatment out of fear of pain. As with any medical or dental procedure, your attending doctor, the dentist, is equipped to provide you with appropriate treatment, including any pain medicines you need.

Finally, to make sure you are comfortable when you leave our office, you’ll get a prescription if necessary. Plus we will call to make sure that you are not in an abnormal amount of discomfort. Our goal is to give you stronger, more comfortable teeth, without experiencing pain or discomfort!

There are treatment options that are faster, such as dentures; however, none of these traditional methods prevent bone loss, or give the type of natural look and feel like implants do.